Upcoming Webinars

This is one of 26 chapters published in the Handbook of Life Course Health Development.   Abstract: Challenges to hearing health are a significant public health problem. At least ten million Americans have a hearing loss that interferes with the understanding of normal speech. If lesser degrees of loss are included, the number rises to 28 million. Although there have been considerable advances in understanding the etiology of hearing loss, with genetic causes now thought to account for up to 50% of congenital losses, in many individual cases, the cause of hearing loss remains unknown. This lack of knowledge of the basic pathophysiology of hearing difficulties hampers prevention and treatment efforts. …

This webinar, part of the LCRN’s series based on the Handbook of Life Course Health Development, features Shirley Russ, MD, MPH.   Dr. Russ is a physician member of the Research Faculty at the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities. Trained as a Pediatrician in England and as a Child Development Specialist in Australia, Dr. Russ has conducted research on early hearing loss and on lifecourse influences on hearing health. She helped pioneer one of the first statewide infant hearing screening programs in Australia, and has chaired a number of national initiatives aimed at improving the quality of the US Newborn Hearing Screening Program. She also recently chaired the HRSA- …

Previous research on anthropometric factors and adult hearing loss has found relationships, in separate studies, to birthweight and contemporary BMI. However no study has examined data on BMI over the life course. This paper uses data from the 1958 British Birth Cohort to examine relationships between BMI (both in childhood and adulthood), changes in BMI between adjacent age waves, and hearing thresholds at 1 kHz and 4 kHz obtained by audiometric examination at age 45 yrs. Body Mass Index (BMI) in adulthood, but not in childhood, was associated with increased hearing threshold levels at both 1 kHz and 4 kHz at age 45 yrs. Two further models examine the effect …